1968 Puma Brush Spikes & Original Box - Revolutionary Shoes Banned from the 1968 Olympic Games!...

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1968 Puma Brush Spikes & Original Box - Revolutionary Shoes Banned from the 1968 Olympic Games! The 1968 Olympic Trials at Echo Summit featured four world records--John Carlos broke the 200-meter sprint record with a time of 19.7; Lee Evans broke the 400-meter sprint record with a 44-second dash; Geoff Vanderstock set the 400-meter intermediate hurdles record with a time of 48.8 seconds; and Bob Seagren set the pole vault record with a vault of 17 feet, 9 inches. No track and field competition held in the United States in the fifty-six years since has had as many world records. Three factors contributed to this slew of records: the high altitude, the brand new state-of-the-art 3M tartan track and, probably most of all, the revolutionary new Puma Brush Spikes.

While there was compelling evidence suggesting that Puma's crimson velour hot rods had something to do with it, the final spike in the coffin was undoubtedly a widely circulated image John Carlos holding up the futuristic shoes after clocking the first sub-20-second 200 in history.

Two weeks before the opening ceremonies of the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympic Games, the IAAF decided the Brush Spikes did not comply with the technical rules and announced: "No technical rule can be changed during an Olympic year, and the rule on track shoes now requires a maximum of eight spikes." The shoes were banned from the Olympics, all future track meets and all records that had been set in the brush shoe were erased from the books. Many believe that the primary reason for the swift and definitive ban was that Adidas intervened because they controlled the market and couldn't compete with Puma's new technology.

American sprinter Lee Evans, who won the gold meter in the 400-meters, while setting a world record time of 43.86 which lasted for twenty years, recalled years later "I believe I would have ran faster in the brush shoe. Everyone on the Olympic team wanted to run in that shoe. It opened the door to creative thinking about the future in track spikes."

Steve Williams, the fastest man in the world in the early 1970's echoed Evans' sentiments: "In that Brush Shoe, when you put your foot down in the curve, it grabs that rubber track and doesn't shift from left to right." Williams also went on record with a much mor shocking claim that Adidas chairman Horst Dassler told him in 1975 that Adidas "blackmailed three IAAF officials to make their ruling."

Very few of the legendary O.G. brush shoes remain from the original 500 pairs. One Puma spokesman has been quoted as saying that most were "destroyed after the ban. We still have a few pairs in our archives."

Presented here is a true track and field unicorn--an original pair of Puma Brush Spikes, still housed in their original Puma box with original tissue paper. Displays crimson velour uppers with gray Formstrip and Velcro fasteners. Each of the outer soles feature sixty-eight razor sharp Brush Spikes. Size 10 and present in remarkable condition. Original box with distributor's label exhibit wear but remains intact.